Statue Razing

i. Wrestling Jocks

Wrestling jocks wrestling
On a natural slope, so
The upper will win
For descent is an arbiter judging
As rashly as time does
Where the subsequent raze any record
For a while, but
This is triumph enough for a lifetime
And passionate statue raising.

Comical fellows with performances
By the yardstick of time
As measured as a
Unique piece of art
And quite surely as hard
To obtain while you're on it.
Despite––or rather thanks to––the slope.


ii. Actual Fervor

Unaroused manhood is like a fish in water.
Aroused, it stiffens into driftwood
A floating log and peril
Easily stuck when encountering another
A hazard typical of these broad streams, though
Not really at its proper place in the current.

***

There was surely a naughty bit of fervor at work
When eyeballs still showed me
And mindballs completed the partial view
And provided that landscape with indwellers––
Beasts, insouciant enough to come down from ages
When peek-a-boo was a more common pastime and
Unawares, beauty would beam through the dazzling leafage.

But now she is balder and fervor alone
May revive such nude-animated paradise
While a child I cut my way through residual lushness
––This town park of a vanished world––
Rambling past rosy limbs, odd or in pairs, but all forsaken
Dew-slick portions of idols reckless somersaults
In better days had eventually scattered into pieces, into
Henceforth incorruptible fragments of truth.

February 5, 2008